The ORNL FERC Form 1 Hydropower Cost Database Extract is a cleaned and compiled version of the hy... more The ORNL FERC Form 1 Hydropower Cost Database Extract is a cleaned and compiled version of the hydropower component of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) Electric Utility Annual Report, also known as Form-1. The database includes conventional and pumped storage hydropower plants owned by non-federal major utilities that submitted the Form 1 data from 1994-2020, representing about 22% of existing conventional hydropower capacity and 61% of pumped storage capacity. The database includes the escalation factors and describes the methods used to scale costs to a common data year, as well as tables of identifiers necessary to link the hydropower plants to two other relevant databases, the National Inventory of Dams and the ORNL Existing Hydropower Assets database. This database provides historical capital and operating costs for three schedules/classes defined in Form 1: Large Hydro, Pumped Storage Hydro, and Small Hydro. The Large Hydro and Pumped Storage Hydro data in...
Hydropower plays a key role in the evolving energy grid. In the United States, thousands of non-p... more Hydropower plays a key role in the evolving energy grid. In the United States, thousands of non-powered dams (NPDs) represent untapped opportunities for new energy production. This paper reviews past NPD resource assessments, with a particular focus on those in the United States, and evaluates where there is room for improving methods, data, and assumptions for estimating development potential. Through this review, we catalog the types of information that are available to stakeholders involved in NPD development. Past assessments have generally focused on interests of project developers (i.e. how much hydropower development potential is available); however, needs of other stakeholders are not adequately addressed in literature. We thus suggest specific actions for improving methods and data used in assessing development potential: establishing consistency among datasets, accounting for uncertainties, representing technology in a more robust way, and accounting for a broader suite of...
The ORNL FERC Form 1 Hydropower Cost Database Extract is a cleaned and compiled version of the hy... more The ORNL FERC Form 1 Hydropower Cost Database Extract is a cleaned and compiled version of the hydropower component of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC) Electric Utility Annual Report, also known as Form-1. The database includes conventional and pumped storage hydropower plants owned by non-federal major utilities that submitted the Form 1 data from 1994-2020, representing about 22% of existing conventional hydropower capacity and 61% of pumped storage capacity. The database includes the escalation factors and describes the methods used to scale costs to a common data year, as well as tables of identifiers necessary to link the hydropower plants to two other relevant databases, the National Inventory of Dams and the ORNL Existing Hydropower Assets database. This database provides historical capital and operating costs for three schedules/classes defined in Form 1: Large Hydro, Pumped Storage Hydro, and Small Hydro. The Large Hydro and Pumped Storage Hydro data in...
Hydropower plays a key role in the evolving energy grid. In the United States, thousands of non-p... more Hydropower plays a key role in the evolving energy grid. In the United States, thousands of non-powered dams (NPDs) represent untapped opportunities for new energy production. This paper reviews past NPD resource assessments, with a particular focus on those in the United States, and evaluates where there is room for improving methods, data, and assumptions for estimating development potential. Through this review, we catalog the types of information that are available to stakeholders involved in NPD development. Past assessments have generally focused on interests of project developers (i.e. how much hydropower development potential is available); however, needs of other stakeholders are not adequately addressed in literature. We thus suggest specific actions for improving methods and data used in assessing development potential: establishing consistency among datasets, accounting for uncertainties, representing technology in a more robust way, and accounting for a broader suite of...
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Papers by Colin Sasthav